Comment by pixard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pixard | Hacker News Reader

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I am not in the US, but I've also had many of the issues you describe. For me everything originated in the network equipment. I kept upgrading to more and more expensive routers until I came to the conclusion they are all just shit. I literally bought the best router you could buy from Asus for like $300 and I kept getting disconnects and issues many times a day. I tried the custom firmwares and what not as well, but I think it's all just so badly designed that there's no saving it.

I had a hunch that it must somehow be "me" and not my ISP, so I replace ALL of my network gear with Ubiquiti stuff. I got a UniFi USG (handles actual routing), UniFi Switch (US-8-150W), UniFi AP AC Pro (Wireless AP), CloudKey (runs the software that powers all this, but it's not strictly needed, you can run it on your PC/Mac as well just to setup things and it doesn't need to be running 100% of the time).

Since I've done this I've had ZERO disconnects. Not a single one. No WiFi problems either. I'm not sure if it would fix what you're experiencing, but I thought I'd share my experience.

It depends on where you are but if you are in a hot country you may have been able to fix your network issues with a $5 laptop cooler. A lot of the wireless routers do not have enough cooling for hot environments. My cheap hack that usually fixes problem is a cheap USB cooling mat that I put under the router and plug it into the USB port of the router. Almost always improves the reliability.

My wireless issues directly correlate to my power bill here in Florida. The more the AC runs, the more it overheats and fails me. It's smooth sailing once the temperature drops, though.

The Ubiquiti APs really are the key here. My household had the same problem with the various makes, models, etc until we switched there. For wifi, we use a mini-itx box running pfsense and it works fantastically. If you want reliability, you need to not use consumer gear, period, because it's all crap.

I think the problem with consumer Wifi routers is that they pack so many features in them (that few people need or use, but hey, if you're comparing specs and one router is also a USB print server and the other is not, you may as well get the one with the extra feature even if you'll never use it... just in case). All of those features lead to code bloat, bugs, and dilutes development resources so they spend less time on core Wifi functionality and more time on features that I'll never use -- I know I'll never use my Access point as a cloud storage server.

I've been much happier with my home worker after I traded in my all in one AP + Router/Firewall with a discrete firewall (pfSense) and Ubiquiti AP that's only an AP, nothing else.

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